In an information handling system having multiple CPUs which add items of data to a single memory table, there is a need to prevent an item from being stored in the memory table twice and a need to prevent two CPUs from writing to the same line in the memory table. The conventional solution is to create a lock from memory to the entire table or part of it, such as for each individual line. The first option can be very slow if the table has many lines and is accessed a lot. In other words, if only one CPU can access the table at a time the ability to add items to the memory table will be very slow. The second option can be very expensive in terms of memory usage, since for each line a lock is created, and each new lock is stored in memory. In summary, what is needed is a process for writing an item to a line in a memory table shared by a plurality of processors, wherein no locks are used.